The jury in the trial of Lucy Letby has been told it can reach a majority verdict on charges that the nurse murdered and attempted to murder babies.
The panel of seven women and four men had been deliberating for 76 hours when the judge, Mr Justice Goss, told them on Tuesday they could now reach verdicts on which at least 10 of them agree.
Letby, 33, denies murdering seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others at the Countess of Chester hospital, in north-west England, where she worked.
The jury at Manchester crown court began deliberations on 10 July and are in their fourth week of considering the charges.
One juror was discharged on Thursday last week for what the judge described as “good personal reasons”.
Letby was on trial over what the prosecution alleged was a “calculated” and “cold blooded” year-long series of killings from June 2015.
She was accused of murdering newborns by injecting them with air, and attempting to kill others by poisoning them with insulin or “sabotaging” their feeding tubes.
The jury was told that consultant paediatricians raised concerns about Letby when they spotted what the prosecution described as her “common link” to the sudden and “unexplained” deaths.
One of the babies was 24 hours old when Letby allegedly injected him with air, killing him just 90 minutes after she had begun her shift. She tried to kill his twin sister the next day, it was alleged.
However, the nurse has consistently denied the allegations, insisting that a number of the babies were the victims of poor care and that they should have been receiving specialist treatment elsewhere.
The university graduate, originally from Hereford, told jurors she had never harmed any child and added: “I only ever did my best to care for them. I’m here to help and to care, not to harm.”
Letby said in evidence that her “whole world was stopped” when she was accused of the “sickening” crimes.
The trial continues.
